The invention concerns a leaf for a multi-leaf collimator for delimiting a high-energy beam from an irradiation device, in particular, for conformation irradiation, wherein the multi-leaf collimator comprises a plurality of mutually opposite leaves which can be moved into the beam path via drives, such that the contour of the beam path can be shaped in accordance with the volume to be irradiated.
The invention also concerns a multi-leaf collimator for delimiting a high-energy beam from an irradiation device, in particular, for conformation irradiation, comprising a plurality of mutually opposite leaves which can be moved into the beam path via drives, such that the contour of the beam path can be shaped in accordance with the volume to be irradiated.
The invention also concerns a device for delimiting a high-energy beam from an irradiation device, in particular, for conformation irradiation, comprising a multi-leaf collimator having a plurality of mutually opposite leaves which can be moved into the beam path via drives, such that the contour of the beam can be shaped in accordance with the volume to be irradiated, and with a further shielding for delimiting the path of the high-energy beam.
The invention furthermore concerns an irradiation device, in particular for stereotactic conformation irradiation, with means for delimiting a high-energy beam from the irradiation device using a multi-leaf collimator comprising a plurality of mutually opposite leaves which can be moved into the beam path via drives, such that the contour of the beam can be shaped in accordance with the volume to be irradiated, and with means for delimiting the path of the high-energy beam using further shielding.
A leaf, a multi-leaf collimator, a device for beam delimitation and an irradiation device of this type are known in the art, e.g. from EP 0 193 509 A2.
All beam-absorbing materials, large amounts of which are required for the above-mentioned tasks, have a very large specific weight which complicates handling of the collimators on the irradiation devices, in particular, exchange thereof. A further problem is that tungsten, which is advantageous as a radiation-absorbing material and is therefore most frequently used, is expensive and the price and delivery times are also subject to very large, politically dependent, variations on the world market, since tungsten is also used for the production of weapons.
It is therefore the underlying purpose of the invention to reduce the need for radiation-absorbing material to as great an extent as possible.